


What happens in abandoned bathrooms

by lioncub



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 6: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Canon Compliant, Friendship, Gen, Luna Lovegood & Draco Malfoy Friendship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:20:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24019645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lioncub/pseuds/lioncub
Summary: In which Draco is hiding in Myrtle's bathroom and then Luna walks in.
Relationships: Luna Lovegood & Draco Malfoy
Comments: 3
Kudos: 39
Collections: Harry Potter





	What happens in abandoned bathrooms

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Prongsiemausi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prongsiemausi/gifts).



Draco Malfoy was not having a good day.  
He still hadn’t managed to repair the Vanishing Cabinet and just this morning, he had received a letter from his mother which had heavily implied that the Dark Lord was getting more and more impatient about Draco’s lack of progress. And then – because things just never seemed to work out for Draco – McGonagall had given him another detention for forgetting about his Transfiguration assignment. Again.  
Luckily, that had been at the end of the lesson, because Draco just hadn’t been able to keep it together after that. He had barely managed to escape Pansy’s insufferable questions, ducking into a deserted corridor when she wasn’t paying attention and (after wandering around aimlessly for a while) had found himself inside a room he’d only heard of but never entered before – Moaning Myrtle’s Bathroom.  
With a quick glance, Draco ascertained that Moaning Myrtle herself wasn’t present at the moment and sighed shakily, leaning onto the closest sink and glancing into the mirror above it. Seeing his reflection staring back at him, looking sickly and defeated, he could feel his throat tightening, making it almost impossible to breathe. And there, alone in the abandoned bathroom, Draco suddenly couldn’t hold his tears back any longer.  
He slumped down against the wall next to the sink, buried his face in his hands and cried.

“Oh. Hello, Draco,” a voice said from the doorway.  
Draco’s head shot up and his hand flew towards his wand, his eyes finding the person who had discovered him in such a vulnerable position, crying his eyes out in the girl’s bathroom. It was Lovegood, with her hair in its usual dishevelled state, her wand behind her left ear and those Dirigible plums of hers dangling from her ears. Her pale eyes were looking straight at him, lacking their usual dreaminess.  
“What are you doing here, Lovegood?” Draco croaked, wincing at how wrecked his voice sounded.  
“Oh, I sometimes come in when I pass by,” Lovegood said. “Myrtle’s always so lonely, you know, so every now and then, we just talk for a bit. And for some reason, a lot of people come in here to cry. Probably because they know that anyone who might hear them will just think it’s Myrtle. So, I always come in to check if someone’s here, you know. Because if it’s Myrtle, I can cheer her up a bit and if it’s someone else, I can maybe cheer that person up.”  
Draco honestly considered hexing her. He certainly would have, if it had been anyone else. But for some reason, he just didn’t… want to hurt her. It was a strange feeling. She was friends with Potter and therefore an enemy, not a friend. He should want to hurt her. She had just caught him sobbing on the floor of a bathroom and within the hour, the whole castle would probably know about it unless he managed to intimidate her enough to stop her from telling anyone. And yet, he didn’t draw his wand, didn’t even try to glare at her. He just sat there, watching her and suddenly feeling exhausted. It doesn’t matter anyway, he thought, because the Dark Lord will kill me at the end of the year. I don’t care anymore.  
Lovegood sat down across from him and looked at him with those silvery eyes, like she was looking into him rather than at him. “I won’t tell anyone, you know. I never do. I’ve found lots of people here over the years, but I never told anyone about it. I promise, Draco.”  
“Don’t call me that.” There weren’t many people at Hogwarts who called him by his first name. Pansy did – and Snape too, of course – but to everyone else he was Malfoy, not Draco. It was very strange to hear Lovegood say his name.  
“But that’s your name, isn’t it? And it’s a really nice name, too! It’s Latin for dragon, right? You know, my father and I went to Sweden last summer to search for the Crumple-Horned Snorkack. We didn’t find one, but we met a Swedish Short-Snout. He was a little shy at first but he liked the salmon we brought him and after that he became a lot more friendly. He almost set my father on fire once, but I think that was probably an accident…”  
Lovegood continued talking, telling him about how she met the Short Snout (And honestly, was she completely insane? No one in their right mind would even dare to approach a dragon, let alone attempt to pet one like she told him she had done.) and about her search for some sort of strange creature Draco had never heard of.  
Strangely enough, it helped. He could feel himself calm down and the queasy feeling in his stomach seemed to lessen for the first time in months.

When Draco finally got up after what felt like hours, Luna (No… Lovegood, her name was Lovegood!) pulled a pastel pink handkerchief out of her pocket and handed it to him. He walked over to the sink and stood in front of it like he had earlier, but this time there wasn’t just his reflection in the mirror but hers too and somehow, that made all the difference. He held the handkerchief underneath the water tap to clean his face with it and the whole time, she was there, right beside him.  
When he tried to hand the handkerchief back to her, he was secretly very glad when she said “Oh, no! You can keep it! I’ve got lots of them!” because he wanted to keep it, needed the reminder that there was someone who cared enough about him to sit with him in a bathroom and talk to him for hours.  
They exited the room together.  
“Thanks, Lovegood,” Draco mumbled, suddenly feeling awkward.  
She smiled. She looked beautiful like that, Draco noticed, with her blonde hair gleaming in the torchlight and her eyes shining brightly.  
What was he doing? They were going to be on different sides in the coming war, she with Potter and Draco with the Death Eaters. No matter how beautiful she was, he could never allow for something like today to ever happen again.  
Draco quickly looked down, feeling like an idiot.  
“Where are your shoes?” he asked, only now noticing her bare feet on the cold stone floor.  
“Oh, I was at the lake to ask the merpeople if there are any Dabberblimps living there and when I got back to the shore, my shoes weren’t there anymore. People like to take my stuff, so it was probably another student… though it might’ve been a Cospicious Dashhopger. They always need new shoes because they have so many feet, you know.”  
“You speak Mermish?! Wait, whatever, that’s not the point. Why would they steal your shoes?”  
“Well, like I said: They’ve got a lot of feet and because they walk around so much, their shoes become worn down pretty fast. They don’t usually take shoes without leaving something else instead, though, so-”  
“What? No, Lovegood. I meant the students, not your… strange creature. Anyway, did you try summoning your shoes?”  
“Oh, I’d have to know their location for that. I did that for the first few times, but they just got cleverer about hiding them. But it doesn’t really matter. They’ll come back; they always do in the end.”  
“Honestly, Lovegood,” Draco sighed, already rummaging through his book bag. He pulled out two pieces of parchment. With a little bit of concentration and a wave of his wand, he transfigured one of them into a dark blue slipper and handed it to Lovegood. “See if it fits.”  
She tried it on and beamed at him. “It’s really soft! Thank you, Draco!”  
Draco, already concentrating on transfiguring the second piece of parchment into another slipper, might have gotten a little distracted by the way she said his name. The second slipper had the same colour as the blush on his cheeks. Before he could change it, Lovegood had already taken it and put it on her other foot.  
“They’re perfect, Draco! Oh, I love the colours!” Still smiling widely, she hugged him.  
Draco froze. By the time he had processed what had happened, Luna Lovegood had already turned the corner, contently wriggling her toes in her new, very comfortable slippers.

**Author's Note:**

> Luna and her father canonically went to Sweden to search for the Crumple-Horned Snorkack. Them meeting a dragon there is my headcanon for that trip though.  
> Dabberblimps are mentioned in the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince video game. Luna asks the merpeople to look for them in the lake so yeah, that's what she was doing there.  
> The Cospicious Dashhopger on the other hand is completely my creation.  
> Also, the only people at Hogwarts calling Draco by his first name seem to be Snape and Pansy Parkinson (even Crabbe, Goyle and Zabini call him Malfoy except for that one time in the Room of Requirement in Deathly Hallows where Crabbe seems mocking him) which I think is just sad. And seeing as my headcanon for Luna is that she calls every student at Hogwarts by their first name I just had to get that one in here somehow.  
> 
> 
> Leave me some kudos or a review if you liked it. (And if you didn't like it, leave me a review to tell me why.)
> 
> If you like a certain pairing so much that you want more of it, tell me (maybe with ideas of how to continue, if you have them) and I'll see what I can do about it.


End file.
